Example Features

Exec is the part of all current Amiga OS versions that oversees pretty much anything task related. It controls the multitasking the Amiga is so well known for. It controls the opening and sharing of system libraries and other resources. It handles communication between programs and tasks. It basically takes care of business under the bonnet. For OS 4.0 it has been completely rewritten and renamed, retaining all of its functions and strengths from OS 3.9, but also gaining new, important abilities, such as:- 68040+FPU Interpreted Emulation for legacy applications- Basic memory protection to help prevent misbehaving applications from crashing the whole system- Much improved crash handling and trapping- Paged, swappable memory support to enable system-native virtual memory- Full, system-legal MMU control via a new API- Stack monitoring and expansion to prevent crashes and overwriting of data by stack-hungry tasks.- Integrated support for PCI expansion cards

The front-end elements you see on most applications are controlled by Intuition. This part of AmigaOS looks after the mouse pointer, screens, windows, gadgets, menus, and all the related events and APIs, including GadTools, the system default mechanism for providing standard-looking gadgets for applications to use. The GadTools system is getting on a bit now, and has been bypassed by systems such as the 3rd party MUI, and OS3.5/3.9's ReAction. OS4.0 sees a complete rewrite of intuition, finally allowing for a very flexible set of preferences and visual styles which can be applied system-wide, as the ReAction system has been integrated completely. GadTools itself will now use the ReAction system of classes instead of its own, creating a uniform look and feel for old and new applications. MUI and Triton for OS4.0 will ship pre-configured to mirror the default OS4.0 look, but will remain using their own gadget systems.
The preferences allow gradients and images to be applied to nearly every element under Intuition's control, so your window borders, menus, gadgets and screen titles can be customised to your liking without risking the stability of the machine with patches and hacks. Windows will also be draggable off screen à la most other graphical OSes, allowing for better management of screen real-estate, but this feature can be disabled should it cause problems with legacy applications (or the operator's desire).

Amiga OS has always required third party software to access any kind of graphics hardware other than native Amiga chipsets, Picasso96 and CyberGraphX being the two widely used systems. OS 4.0 will, for the first time, include this capability (and indeed require this capability as there is no native chipset for the A1). Picasso96 has been chosen as the system to base OS 4.0's graphical system on, but as it is being integrated into the OS, it no longer needs to patch the system to work, resulting in faster, more reliable operation. All assembly code has been removed, and intuition.library, graphics.library and layers.library have been reworked to directly support graphics card use, including iconification and windows positioned partly off the screen. All major bugs with the system have also been eliminated, and critical parts are now PPC native, giving an enormous performance boost.
New drivers will also be available for a much wider variety of graphics cards than currently available for existing Picasso96 systems, including drivers for ATI Radeon series cards. 3D graphics will be catered for by a rewwrite of the existing Warp3D system for classic Amigas, but will be replaced at a later date by a completely new system known as Warp3D Nova which will take advantage of the features offered by current cards but not supported by the current Warp3D incarnation (Warp3D V4). A port of MesaGL is also to be included, which will allow for easier porting of applications using OpenGL or MesaGL, and will sit side-by-side with Warp3D.

Anyone with a current Amiga will almost certainly be familiar with AHI (pronounced "Atchi"), the audio equivalent of Picasso96. This system currently allows Amiga users to use sound hardware other than the native Paula audio controller through the use of a standard API and drivers. AHI V6 will be integrated into AmigaOS 4.0 for using a wide variety of popular sound cards from both the Amiga and PC worlds. Due to this, and the lack of a Paula chip on the new Amiga hardware, old applications which don't support audio.device or AHI, and access Paula directly, will be silent under OS 4.0 and will require complete emulation under UAE or similar to use sound. Most modern programs however use AHI, and so will work under OS4's new audio system.

AmigaOS 4.0 includes a brand new font management system which is capable of using most formats of font files, including TrueType fonts, PostScript fonts, and Windows fonts. What's more, it will make these fonts available through the standard diskfont.library and bullet.library APIs, meaning that existing applications that follow system rules for fonts can automatically use any new fonts or font formats. A single font manager, similar to Intelifont from OS 3.x, will allow the complete control of all fonts from one location, including conversion to bitmap-style fonts for use with old applications not supporting scaleable fonts. Diskfont.library now also allows for antialiasing of fonts, to remove their jagged look when displayed on-screen, and the entire system will now support different character sets without a patch or application-specific settings, ensuring information such as foreign characters and currency symbols are not garbled when moving documents cross-platform.

Connectivity is set to see an improvement over the current situation consisting of two main 3rd-party packages, one of which does not allow for a lot of specific control, the other not being available for a long time. Roadshow, the new OS 4.0 TCP/IP stack, boasts some impressive features, such as a fully configurable firewall and IP filter, and support for PPPoE and DHCP, to allow connection to modern networks such as DSL and Cable systems. Key features include:

- Completely configurable firewall
- NAT (Network Address Translation) for acting as a router or gateway for another network
- Fully compatible with bsdsocket.library, so existing applications can use it transparently
- Automatic, intelligent setup of networks to aid in connecting to existing networks with a minimum of user interaction
- Uses the SANA-II driver system to allow use of existing network hardware
- Expanded API to allow for more flexible programs and for easier use
- Amiga-specific configuration tools - no need to learn any direct unix ported tools

AmiSSL will also make an appearance in OS 4.0 to take care of network encryption needs, allowing secure communication by supporting software (Such as IBrowse, YAM, SimpleMail etc.)

OS 4.0 sees a new incarnation of the Amiga's filesystem, FFS. FastFileSystem is a nice enough system, but is outdated at this stage and lacks some security of modern filesystems. These shortcomings are addressed in FFS2, which offers long filenames (107 characters), multi-user support, better data integrity to prevent invalid drives, and other great improvements over the old FFS, including:

- Completely rewritten in C for cleaner, re-entrant code
- Multithreaded to improve responsiveness
- Native 64-bit addressing for complete support of big hard disks and media
- Improved support for removeable media
- Support for both hard and soft links

SFS has been a viable (and free) alternative to FFS, offering huge improvements in speed, stability of data, filename support, disk sizes and so on. It will be included with OS 4.0 as a contribution, recompiled for the PPC processor and with several bug fixes. This is certainly a welcome addition for the more advanced users.
HDToolbox has also had an overhaul for OS 4.0, and is now called Media Toolbox as it now covers removeable drives, and contains the functionality of many small, separate programs for SCSI control such as setting drive parameters, drive testing and so on. Partition Wizard is also included, and is a disk repair/recovery tool capable of some handy tricks. It can recover deleted files and partitions, files from quick-formatted partitions, repair and salvage data from damaged partitions, and can convert old FFS partitions to the new FFS2 system without having to reformat the partition, though all these will only work on FFS or FFS2 partitions. It can also optimise FFS and SFS partitions for more efficient access.
The CD-ROM Filesystem has been updated and extended to support all major formats, including Windows' Joliet and Apple's HFS(+). It also supports DVDs and VideoCDs (though another player will be needed to actually view the video contents), and CD-RWs in Mount Rainier format for random access with supported CD burners. Audio CDs will be treated as data CDs containing an AIFF file for each trach, so audio ripping no longer required separate software.

AmigaOS 3.9's program launcher, AmiDock, was a nice addition, but lacked a little flexibility. OS 4.0 sees a complete rework of AmiDock, with nice visual touches such as support for animated icons, transparency etc. Under the bonnet, it now supports multiple levels of icons (like a Start Menu), Dockies, which are small programs attached to the dock, and can show currently running applications that use the new application.library. Dockies include such useful things as clocks, magnifying glasses, animation viewers, dividers and more. Another welcome addition to the feature list it the ability to have the dockbar always on top of other windows, or always underneath other windows, something sorely missing from the OS 3.9 version.

AmigaInput is a new system for standardising the computer's input options, primarily for gaming. It replaces lowlevel.library and its support for various joypads with a driver-based system providing support for all existing types of Amiga controllers, Sega controllers, PlayStation controllers and so on. It also supports the addition of drivers for new types of keyboard and mouse which might become available, and for PC gamepads and joysticks connected to the joystick port of a soundcard.

The popular video player MooVid will be included as the movie player for OS 4.0, being recompiled to be OS 4.x and PPC native. Supporting an impressive list of video formats including most AVI types, the now-popular DivX and MPEG4, and QuickTime up to version 6. Performance of this player on the modern hardware of the Amiga One will be very impressive indeed!

For a long time now MUI has been a core part of most people's installations, and is used by vast amounts of software, both shareware and commercial. As it will be required by a lot of the existing software people will want to run under OS 4.0, the MUI system has been entirely recompiled to run natively under the new OS. This will see very acceptable performance gains, and will come preconfigured to match the standard look of OS 4.0, so applications will have a consistent appearance no matter what GUI system the software uses. The comprehensive set of MUI preferences will also be available to registered users of the system, and allows the complete customisation of all aspects of MUI.